Disaster Risk Assessment and Management Tools
Tetra Tech assisted the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Environmental Safeguards Unit (ESG) to identify effective, sustainable development and environmental management practices to address the impacts of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Tetra Tech supported three phases of IDB’s assessment of natural disaster risks in Latin America and the Caribbean during the four-year program. In the first phase, Tetra Tech proposed a gradual, step-by-step process to assess IDB’s projects and identified tools and methodologies to support climate risk mitigation specific to the Caribbean region. We produced a technical note, Climate Change Data and Risk Assessment Methodologies for the Caribbean, which details information on the initial risk screening and assessment steps aimed at guiding clients, sponsors, borrowers, and executing agencies. Our team also produced a fact sheet that introduced IDB’s climate change risk assessment framework, including climate change risk assessment and risk management steps.
For the second phase, Tetra Tech developed the Addressing Climate Change within Disaster Risk Management: A Practical Guide for IDB Project Preparation technical note, which outlined six sector-specific fact sheets containing climate change risk management options, such as sea level rise or flooding. The fact sheets identified options that could be incorporated into IDB investments and to present considerations for monitoring and evaluation strategies to track effectiveness.
Tetra Tech facilitated a series of stakeholder workshops for the IDB to promote awareness and understanding of climate change risks and various risk assessment methodologies to better inform next steps on mitigating risks. These workshops were mandated for ESG specialists and were attended by IDB staff from other departments. World Bank and International Finance Corporation representatives also were invited to attend.
As part of the final project phase, we developed a Climate Change Screening Roadmap to support a systematic approach to assess natural disaster risks. We also developed a training and communications strategy to complement the roadmap, with recommendations for internal outreach and education efforts to educate stakeholders on how to raise awareness about the findings of the report and recommendations for mitigating climate risks.
We developed the roadmap by revising existing screening processes and current IDB and other multilateral development banks (MDB) screening tools and systems. Our team ran focus groups discussions with ESG management and specialists and identified and evaluated existing internal IDB and external data that could be used to support the screening process. The roadmap introduced a two-year, recommended process for ESG to strengthen screening and assessment efforts.
To further support IDB’s assessment of natural disaster risks in the region, Tetra Tech provided enhanced visualization tools for IDB’s internal disaster and climate change screening analysis. We implemented newly processed GIS datasets, which provided visualization of climate change impacts and created a subsector sensitivity matrix to identify natural hazards and their potential degree of impact. Tetra Tech also provided technical guidance and training to IDB’s information technology team on the application of the new data sets.
Tetra Tech’s assessment helped prepare IDB to combat climate change risks in Latin America and the Caribbean. IDB’s ESG can achieve its objectives of sustainable development and environmental practices by implementing appropriate risk management and risk assessment measures, training and communications, and screening analysis.